Prosodic features in "enka". The relationship between the melody of lyrics in "enka" and the prosody of Japanese

Abstract: Previous research on the relationship between the melody of lyrics and Japanese prosody has only approached the topic on a word accent level. In this paper, however, I examined to what extent four best-seller enka manifest prosody with reference to larger prosodic units. I found no consistent relationship between the accentual fall and word initial rise when looking at isolated words. However, a mutual principle, applicable on both intonation focus and the focus in melody was observed.